It's Not Really About The Coffee Mug or Keeping Your Employees

International Falls, Minnesota is referred to as the Ice Box of the USA.  It is a town of less than 10,000 but it often makes the National news for its temperatures in the winter.  Wherever you go in the US, no matter how cold it is, it is always colder in International Falls.  The town embraces this and has a winter festival in the third week of January to celebrate how cold it is.  One of the most anticipated event is the Freeze Yer Gizzard Blizzard Run.  It is an invigorating 10K run and it attracts runners from all over and it attracted me in the early 1990s.   Despite my layers of clothing, I was still freezing and it was a difficult course.   Crossing that finish line was a remarkable feeling !!!   In addition to being able to tell people that I had finished, I received a coffee mug at the finish line.  Let me tell you about this coffee mug.  It was perfect.  It had the perfect shape, size, colour and it just fit in my hands so nicely.  And, someone at the finish line, took a marker and put my time on the bottom of this cup.  It was a once in a lifetime coffee mug that could never be replaced.  Did I mention that you couldn't just buy this coffee mug, you had to earn it.  No one had the exact coffee mug that I had. And coffee tasted better in this mug than I had previously thought possible.  I liked the feel of it, I liked telling peopl about how I earned this mug.  It was also a perfect shade of blue, my favorite colour.

I proudly took this cup to work so I could enjoy my coffee more.  I had other coffee mugs at work but this was the only use I used.  Everyone at this work place had lots of coffee mugs.  It was just sort of the work culture.

One day when I came back to work from vacation, my coffee mug had disappeared.  I really was devastated.  No one seemed to care, I had other coffee mugs so they couldn't understand the big deal. I looked for a week in everyone's stash of mugs, in the cafeteria, in other departments, I just kept looking and everyone was a suspect.  Ultimately, I assumed that someone accidentally knocked it over and broke it and that hurt me even more that no one would admit to this.  It also really hurt that nobody helped me look or understood what this meant to me.   It wasn't just a coffee mug.  It was a symbol of accomplishment and it said to me that I could do anything if I planned and worked for it. It was a way of reminding me how special I was when I was feeling down and insecure.  It gave me confidence.

I may have just lost a coffee mug, but I really lost so much more.   I lost confidence in my colleagues. It felt like they didn't care about me, so why should I stop caring about them.  I had always enjoyed my job as an Adult Mental Health Counselor, but, now I just wasn't as committed.  I didn't come in early anymore.  I didn't make sure that everyone got a card on their special occasions.  Simply put, I started looking for what was wrong than what was right.  I didn't even realize it at the time, but I started looking at other job postings, and fairly soon after, I found one.  If it wasn't for that coffee mug, I might still be at my old job.

I  believe that every employee has a coffee mug.   I don't mean they actually have a coffee mug, but they have something that is as important to them as my coffee mug was to me.  This seems trivial, but it really isn't.  Recruiting new employees is very expensive.  Training them and orientating them to your work culture is also expensive.  Employee turn-over costs employers.  They have to re-establish relationships with clients.  A new employee in a small company can cause serious disruption in work culture,

Employers should devote time in retaining employees and then they will have to spend less time in recruiting employees.  One of the ways to do this is to find out "what is the employee's coffee mug?" What is the one thing that is the "deal breaker" for your employee.

I worked with a woman who really wanted her colleagues to celebrate their birthdays by going out for lunch.  This worked out to about one lunch a month.  This was really important to her.   It was her way of appreciating her colleagues and knowing they appreciated her.  Plus, she loved celebrations!  Having a monthly lunch out made her a more productive and committed employee.

I worked with a man who was on the Board of his children's private school.  His job was very demanding and he worked many hours of overtime every week.  As a result, he missed a lot of sports games and attending other activities with his kids.   His membership on the Board was him showing how important they were to him.  The Board met on the fourth Tuesday of the month for two hours. This was his coffee mug.  His employer couldn't give him that time off because they didn't allow half day off.   It was either take the whole day off or nothing.  He quickly found another job that found a way to make this work him, and it was quite easy since we already was putting in so much overtime.

A woman was so proud of her son making the Dean's List in her first year of College.  She put up a framed picture of the announcement at her desk.  She worked at reception so this meant that clients coming to the firm could also see this.  This was against the company policy that only "branded" information should be available for clients to see.  She had to take it down.  That was her coffee mug.  The company had other options they could have allowed her to put it in the staff lounge, for example.  She became a disgruntled employee and eventually they had to let her go.

A man I worked with came from an alcoholic family and grew up in poverty.  His neighbours were his salvation and he thought about them as the most positive influence in his life.  They weren't blood but he was closer to them than his own parents.  When his neighbour, who was life a father to him, passed away, he was devastated and needed some time.   It was policy that bereavement leave only applied to close relatives.  He didn't qualify for time off but the employer recognized how important it was and granted an exception.  He was so grateful that he worked even harder than before for the same company until retirement.  The company recognized his coffee mug and made sure it was there for him.

It is really common sense that needs to be common practice.  Figure out what is your employee's "coffee mug" and make sure it doesn't go missing !!!